Next.

When Armand had retired and they’d moved from Montréal to Three Pines, it had never occurred to her there’d be a next. She was still surprised and elated that there was a now.

But now had bled into next.

Armand wasn’t yet sixty, and she herself had given up a hugely successful career at the Bibliothèque nationale.

Next.

She was, truth be told, still savoring here and still savoring now. But next was on the horizon, slouching toward them.

“Hello, you still here?”

Gabri, large and voluble, walked across the bistro he owned with his partner, Olivier. He hugged Isabelle Lacoste.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” said Myrna, arriving with him and taking the slender woman in her ample arms.

“Soon. I was just at your bookstore,” Isabelle said to Myrna. “You weren’t there so I left the money by the cash register.”

“You found a book?” asked Myrna. “Which one?”

They discussed books while Gabri got them a couple of beers and chatted with customers before returning to the table. In his late thirties, Gabri’s dark hair was just beginning to gray, and his face was showing crinkles when he laughed, which was often.

“How was rehearsal?” Reine-Marie asked Gabri and Myrna. “Is the play going well?”

“You’ll have to ask Antoinette,” said Gabri, indicating with his beer a middle-aged woman at another table.

“Who is she?” asked Isabelle.

She looked to Lacoste like her daughter. Only her daughter was seven and this woman must’ve been forty-five. The woman wore clothes more suited to an infant. A bow was in her spiky purple hair. She wore a flowered skirt, short and tight around her ample bottom, and a tank top, tight around her ample top, under a bright pink sweater. If a candy store vomited, Antoinette would be the result.

“That’s Antoinette Lemaitre and her partner, Brian Fitzpatrick,” said Reine-Marie. “She’s the artistic director of the Knowlton Playhouse. They’re coming over for dinner tonight.”

“We’ll be there too,” said Gabri. “We’re trying to get Armand and Reine-Marie to join us.”

“Join?” said Isabelle. “Us?”

“The Estrie Players,” said Myrna. “I’ve been trying to convince Clara to join too. Not to act, necessarily, but maybe to paint sets. Anything to get her out of that studio. She just stares at that half-finished portrait of Peter all day long. I don’t think she’s lifted her brush in weeks.”

“That painting gives me the creeps,” said Gabri.

“Isn’t it a bit overkill, though?” said Reine-Marie. “Getting one of the top painters in Canada to do sets for an amateur production?”

“Picasso painted sets,” said Myrna.

“For the Ballets Russes,” Reine-Marie pointed out.

“I bet if he lived here he’d do our sets,” said Gabri. “If anyone could convince him, she could.”

He gestured toward Antoinette and Brian, who were approaching the table.

“How was rehearsal?” Reine-Marie asked, after introducing them to Isabelle Lacoste.

“It would be better if this one”—Antoinette jerked her head toward Gabri—“listened to my direction.”

“I need to be free to make my own creative choices.”

“You’re playing him gay,” said Antoinette.

“I am gay,” said Gabri.

“But the character is not. He’s just coming out of a ruined marriage.”

“Oui. Coming out. Because he’s…?” said Gabri, leaning toward her.

“Gay?” asked Brian.

Antoinette laughed. It was full and hearty and unrestrained and Isabelle liked her.

“Okay, play him any way you like,” Antoinette said. “It doesn’t really matter. The play’s going to be a hit. Even you can’t mess it up.”

“That’s on the poster,” Brian confided. “Even Gabri Can’t Mess This Up.”

He put his hands up in front of him to indicate a huge banner.

Reine-Marie laughed and knew it might actually be true, and a good selling point.

“What part do you play?” Isabelle asked Myrna.

“The owner of the boardinghouse. I was going to play it as a gay man, but since Gabri already claimed that territory I decided to go in a different direction.”

“She’s playing her as a large black woman,” said Gabri. “Inspired.”

“Thank you, darling,” said Myrna, and the two air-kissed.